Once again, a prominent business leader headlined the recent Board of Veterans CEOs’ forum
held on April 23rd, 2010. Richard Goeglein (retired CEO of Harrah’s Hotels & Casinos) led a
highly charged discussion about Maintaining a Growth Strategy During Periods of Economic
Turmoil.

Participants – an intimate group of 12 current CEOs of midsize to large companies – had an
opportunity to ask penetrating questions on various aspects of growth, from hiring the right
people and letting go of the wrong people for the organization’s next level of growth to
building a board to support significant growth through M&A activity.

In the discussion, Richard Goeglein did not pull punches. He shared one of his biggest
failures as a CEO. From there, the sitting CEOs became very open to honestly share the
challenges they faced.

When Richard was asked about how to fire people who started with the company, but were no
longer able to contribute to the company’s success, he stated that when he was a CEO in that
position, he learned to first look at himself. He expounded on the importance of
understanding your personal leadership style and how it affects the performance of those
under you. He suggested a 360 assessment for any CEO asking about the performance of their
people. He also suggested moving people to different job functions before firing them. He
reinforced that with a message stating the importance of putting people in positions where
they are valued and respected. He said, “people know when their job serves no value to the
enterprise. If you leave people in that position, you are disrespecting them. Ultimately,
that impacts performance.”

In addition, Richard made the case for hiring people who hold the same values as you (the
CEO), instead of focusing solely on skills and competencies. This becomes even more
important when you are hiring smart, successful people to accomplish an objective they may
not have pursued in the past. This is often the dilemma of companies experiencing hyper
growth.

As the conversation progressed, participants asked questions about managing the board of
directors that held a very conservative approach to growth when the opportunities required a
more assertive, risk taking approach. The suggestions from Richard as well as the other
sitting CEOs was to build a board that could support where the company is going, instead of
working with a board built for past accomplishments. The challenges facing the CEO with a
conservative board were significant. In fact, the advice from everyone was overwhelmingly
in favor of increasing the level of communication with each board member before pursuing M&A
activity.

The roundtable discussion ended with comments on how it was “good to see that other CEOs
were facing the same problems.” There was a sentiment of relief from each sitting CEO when
they saw that other CEOs were seeking the solutions to similar problems.

As usual, the feedback from the forum was overwhelmingly positive, emphasizing the
tremendous value there was to discussing critical business issues with such experienced and
accomplished business leaders. As a result, several new CEOs have joined the Board and
interest is growing for the next forum (scheduled for June 25th).

The Board Chairman, Ted Santos commented, "The quality of the roundtable discussions have
remained high. Because of that, the caliber of our members has increased. For us, that
creates a welcomed challenge if we are to continue to exceed the expectations of our
members".

For more information on The Board of Veteran CEOs, please call 888 471-3660.